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The Internet

Metabrowse Your Web Routine? 29

Posted by Cliff from the another-fancy-name-for-"portal" dept.
AJ-perler asks: "About 2 years ago 'Metabrowsers' were the new hot browsing tools that addressed the trend of users frequently browsing specific sites. Business 2.0 ran an article late 2000 about the problems metabrowser companies faced. I think metabrowsers are interesting and useful, but I haven't seen mention of them for a long time. Do any Slashdot readers use these few that have survived? Is the general public web savvy enough, even today, for this type of browsing?"

For those of you interested in this concept, AJ has provided this list of example "meta-browsing" sites:

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Metabrowse Your Web Routine? More

Metabrowse Your Web Routine?

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  • Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RaboKrabekian ( 461040 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @11:42PM (#3962947) Journal
    Having not heard about metabrowsing in two years is probably a good indication that the trend hasn't swept the internet community by storm.
  • Why does anyone need this? Even my grandmother, who is not very good with computers, can remember the sites that she likes to check every day. She can click the little "Bookmarks" menu, or even *gasp* type in a URL. So, if even the simplest computer user can get through their daily web routine without a "metabrowser", what's the point?
    • The point (to the best of my knowledge) is convenience, but that doesn't work either because for that to really work you'd need a great deal of cooperation between businesses, and that simply won't work. Or you just get businesses that cooperate with that particular metabrowser. But what happens when you want to buy something from a website that's not participating? You just ruined the entire purpose of it. Or, rather, it ruined itself. Or something. And yes, it wasn't necessary. If there's no necessity for something on the market, it dies. No necessity for paying people to watch ads? Well, guess where that goes?
      • You are right about the convenience, but I don't understand the comment about needing business cooperation for it to work.

        DailyRoutine [dailyroutine.com] and Quickbrowse [quickbrowse.com] are tools that don't rely on site cooperation. They just let you connect your favorite sites, not the ones they want you to use. If you are talking about Yodlee [yodlee.com] then yes. If your institution isn't on their list, then your SOL.

    • Why does anyone need this? Even my grandmother, who is not very good with computers, can remember the sites that she likes to check every day. She can click the little "Bookmarks" menu, or even *gasp* type in a URL. So, if even the simplest computer user can get through their daily web routine without a "metabrowser", what's the point?

      I'll agree that for most users at home, this doesn't seem to make much sense at first. But, there are a couple of cases in which this could be helpful.

      • Better Signal/Noise Ratio There's ever more data available to us. How do I find the stuff I want among all the stuff there is? Sure, there's google [google.com] for looking up archived data. But, what I'd like is something that would scan the web and present only current news in my areas of interest. As elsewhere posted in this thread, to a large extent I've found that /. accomplishes this for me with respect to science and technology. I've not found something comparable for other areas in which I'm interested, especially in my town and surrounding area. Sure, there's the local newspaper, but there's that S/N ratio again! There's value in having a single site which does the sifting for me and presents only the news in which I'm interested.

        The devil is in the details, though. Just how well does such a service work? They need to make a good first impression. Don't keep showing me stuff I'm not interested in, but also don't keep missing out on things I AM interested in! If there were a simple way to do it with technology, then there'd be no need for the editors on /. to sift through article submissions.


      • Accessibility It's one thing to bring up my browser's bookmarks at home. But what if I am away from home? When I go to my local public library or an internet cafe, they don't have my bookmarks available. Sure, I could just create my own homepage which contains my favorite bookmarks, but I know how to write HTML; and I'd wager the majority of people who browse the web do not.

        It could be argued that I should just get a lap top or a PDA with a wireless connection. Yes, that would be nice, but that's not a viable option for me at the moment, economically. Maybe in a few years when the upfront and ongoing costs of a wireless PDA has come down some more. My ISP provides unlimited dial-up access for my home PC at $20 per month. We're nowhere near that for mobile access and it's just out of most people's price range.


      • Business executives. They have the financial means and the need for information. But, at the moment, they've got secretaries and underlings who do the sifting for them already. Add on the resistance to change from what "works" and it will take a while for it to catch on.

      So, though I see some value to the concept, I don't see much of a market for it, now. But, over time as the costs go down and the capabilities improve, I can see this becoming increasingly useful.

  • With things like the "Bookmark This Group of Tabs" option in Mozilla, this is not necessary.

    And, yes... I find this feature useful, but it seems like the MetaBrowser sites are not worth it. Oh, I run scripts that pull information from sites to update a personal page, but this is because I like to view all of my content on the same page.

    So, I have to wonder, when did this ever seem like a good idea to someone??? If I'm in front of my terminal, I can certainly click on a bookmark... And, most likely that link (that I use so often) will be on my Personal Toolbar or Sidebar.

    I think this will just go down in the history of "bad ideas"...why should I trust a corporation to tell me what I'm interested in???
    • actually, i would say this is a "good idea which would never really work right". sure, i could have a bunch of bookmarks (which i do). and i could have a set of pages i go to everyday (which i do). and my browser could open up to one of those fFor me right away (which it does). but the idea is fFor all my other browsing of the day to be nsted right into that fFirst startup page. a single page which gives daily headlines, stocks, sports, tech news, a basic quick up-to-date run down on everything really new in the world. nice idea, really. and most ISPs have a homepage which attempts to do this sort of idea. heck, this is really all CNN is.

      but the thing is, you're right. if i'm at my computer, why wouldnt i just go to the original source - which will give much more space to dedicated topics - to get the original scoop?

      the answer to the actual story's question here , then, is: yes, it's a nice idea. but not on this media. try reading the newspaper or watch the news if that's what you're after.
      • Hmm... I think that the all in one page approach has been tried over and over (happened to have tried onepage.com?) but they are too complex for the average user. Is a site going to live on the popularity of the geek community (no offense Slashdot)??

        Yodlee [yodlee.com] trys to solve the problem, unlike Onepage, by only providing partnered web sites. It puts all (scraped) line item'ed info onto one HTML page. But the business of providing your account numbers and passwords is annoying and scarey.

        DailyRoutine [dailyroutine.com] trys to solve the problem by working like a familiar bookmark manager with special folders. It shows your favorite pages in their full glory (in frame(s) or new window). But most people won't even set the time on their VCRs, so pursuing ease of use may be a red herring.

        Quickbrose [quickbrowse.com] trys to solve the problem by emailing the pages to you so you don't even have to go browse the web at all. Stitches together slightly modified versions of entire web pages. With email accounts filling up with SPAM daily, many people don't want the extra stuff in their inbox.

        Personally, I use DailyRoutine [dailyroutine.com] which doesn't send me emails and doesn't ask for my user ids or passwords. I'd use bookmarks exclusively except that I jump between NS and IE and between about 8 computers throughout the month. It's nice having one setup that follows me, and happens to let me browse my daily sites like a slide show.

  • I suppose it isn't exactly metabrowsing, but in mozilla 1.0 you can file a group of tabs as one bookmark. Just choose "File Bookmark" from the "Bookmarks" menu, and click the "File as Group" checkbox.

    I use it to browse slashdot, the register, macsurfer, etc., for my morning tech news, without having to go to each sit individually.

  • Ironic, I use /. for this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bald Wookie ( 18771 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:24AM (#3963213)
    See those slashboxes over there? I've got K5, Ars Forums, Brunching Shuttlecocks, E2 and O'Reilly. These are sites that I browse when I've got some free time and something intersting comes up. I know the url's, but I don't have them bookmarked because I get them here on slashdot.

    Even the front page hits sites that I occasionally look at. Ny Times, New Scientist, Salon, and a few others. If I played "six degrees of slashdot", most of my favorite sites would only be one or two degrees away from here. Granted, slashdot is a link whore. However I still spend most of my 'non task oriented' browsing on this side of the web.

    Just had a thought. Maybe these web aggregators/metabrowsers are missing the boat. I come to slashdot for the content, not the boxes. If I didn't check slashdot daily for the content I wouldn't even look at them. A business model based on screen scraping the web makes me feel like it's 1999 again. You can hardly make money serving up your own content, what makes you think you'll make the bucks with secondhand RDF feeds?

  • right idea, wrong media. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skotte ( 262100 ) <iamthecheeze@@@gmail...com> on Saturday July 27, 2002 @06:09AM (#3963674) Homepage
    this is essentially how the newspapers do it, you know. you have several companys (reuters, associated press, knight ridder, etc) each has a lot of people on staff to write a lot of things. then they sell the stories to newspapers all over the world. that paper you have in your hand is, if you will, a metabrowser.

    but the net doesnt work like that.
  • From the bottom of every DailyRoutine page:

    "© 1999-2002 DailyRoutine.com, Inc.(TM); Patent Pending"

    I wonder what element of this they feel comfortable patenting...?
    • From the bottom of Quickbrowse.com:

      "Copyright © 1998-2002 Quickbrowse.com Inc. All Rights Reserved. Patent Pending."

      Everyone seems to be pursuing something. Quickbrowse and Dailyroutine have been patent pending for years.

  • I've got to say that I've been using Dailyroutine.com for a few years now, and it has really made my life much, much easier.

    I've got certain web pages I like to read every morning (ESPN's NHL section, the Ottawa Sun's sport section, Dilbert, Userfriendly.org, etc.) so to be able to have a single routine that just goes and grabs them all & sticks them into one easy to read web page is great.

    When I was on dial up I started it before I got into the shower every morning and it was ready by the time I got out of the shower.

    Now I start it at work before I go get my morning coffee and by the time I get back it's done.

    I was skeptical that I'd use Dailyroutine.com when I first heard about it. Now I can't imagine my morning web surfing without it.

    Trust me - try it for a few weeks and you'll get addicted.
  • I have 4 sites I visit each day. Initially, I opened each in its own Opera window, ordered them as I wished, and saved the set up. Now I just open Opera each morning, and it loads all the sites in the order I wish to view them. As I finish viewing a site, I close its window. Once I see a blank screen, it's time to return to real life.
  • Glad to see a mention of DailyRoutine [dailyroutine.com] on Slashdot.

    I built DailyRoutine back in 1999 after seeing the stats in the back of Business 2.0 that the average Internet user browses about 30 pages (5 unique sites) 5 times a week. I noticed my own browsing habits were similar (but magnified :-), and built a tool to help out.

    Since then I've rewritten it a few times and added interesting features.

    Hope you enjoy it,
    -AAron

  • News scraping sites have their place, but they are not considered metabrowsers by today's standards. They are only news aggregation sites, which are usually only part of a person's daily visits.

    "Scraped news sites" don't satisfy my frequent browsing routine. Besides 3 global news sites I also view local news/weather, Yahoo Mail, 3 forums, trillian.cc, SecuriTeam.com, colo site stats, comics, etc...

    If your web browsing habits are not limited to the news available on popular portals, you should try something like QuickBrowse or DailyRoutine. Those sites let you add Slashdot, eBay, Hotmail, ESPN, Weather.com, ... everything you want.

    Saying that a news site is the only metabrowser you need is like saying "Oh I couldn't use a butler because I already read the newspaper every day." A butler could bring you the paper, make your coffee, drive you to the bank, walk the dog, screen your mail...

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